The essence of the allegations against the company are that it has an undisclosed level of closeness to the Chinese government, which itself has an agenda to spy on the United States and potentially, should it be necessary, disrupt American telecommunications systems. If those two things are correct, the Committee says, Huawei should not be let anywhere near deals allowing it access to the country’s core communications infrastructure.

As a maker and vendor of core communications infrastructure, that is obviously something of a problem for Huawei, which has spent much of the last decade feasting on the market share of its competitors in Europe, Asia and Africa.

The report that was made public today is unfortunately missing what it claims to be the juiciest details of Huawei’s misbehavior - there is, the Committee said, a classified section of the report that ”provides significantly more information adding to the Committee’s concerns,” but alas, “that information cannot be shared publicly without risking U.S. national security.”

With that being said, the Committee says it has seen enough evidence, both classified and unclassified, to conclude that addressing the concerns it raises is “an imperative for the country.”

Some of the disputed information seems easy enough to resolve: rather than being a difference in opinion over the nature of state contracts or the definition of subsidies, they are fairly clear statements of fact. Take, for example, the background of the company’s founder and president, Ren Zhengfei. In a 2010 open letter addressing accusations he was a top-level leader of the Chinese army’s communications engineering unit, here’s the bio offered by Huawei, which it is sticking with today:

“Born on October 25, 1944 into a rural family where both parents were schoolteachers, Mr. Ren spent his primary and middle school years in a remote mountainous town in Guizhou Province, and studied at Chongqing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture, where he graduated in 1963. He was employed in civil engineering until 1974 when he joined the military’s Engineering Corps as a soldier tasked with building the then French-imported Liao Yang Chemical Fiber Factory. From there, Mr. Ren was promoted to Technician, Engineer and Deputy Director, a deputy-regimental-chief-equivalent professional role that had no military rank. Because of his outstanding performance, Mr. Ren was invited to the National Science Conference in 1978 and the National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1982.

After retiring from the army in 1983, when China’s central government disbanded the entire Engineering Corps, Mr. Ren became dissatisfied with his job at the logistics service base of the Shenzhen South Sea Oil Corporation and decided to establish Huawei with RMB 21,000 (about US$2,500) in capital in 1987. He became the President of Huawei in 1988 and has held the title ever since.”

And here’s what the Select Committee had to say in today’s report, acknowledging the company’s claims regarding its founder:

“Many industry analysts, however, have suggested otherwise; many believe, for example, that the founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, was a director of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Information Engineering Academy, an organization that they believe is associated with 3PLA, China’s signals intelligence division, and that his connections to the military continue.”

Trickier to conclusively judge would be the aspect of the report that hinges on the conclusion that the company, and its fellow Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE, “cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence.” The Committee presented Huawei with the views of analysts and other expert witnesses claiming that it remains in close contact with the Chinese state; Huawei in return asserted its relationship with the government and the Communist party is simply as close as any large business could be expected to be with the state bodies that set policy, regulate the industry and so on.

But again and again, throughout the report, the pattern emerges: an allegation is made, Huawei denies it, without providing evidence deemed detailed enough to substantiate the denial, and the Committee is unimpressed. For example:

“Huawei officials consistently denied having any connection to or influence by the Chinese government beyond that which is typical regulation. Specifically, Huawei explained in its written responses to the Committee, that “Huawei maintains normal commercial communication and interaction with relevant government supervisory agencies, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Commerce.”

Huawei claims that it “does not interact with government agencies that are not relevant to its business activities, including the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of State Security, and the Central Military Commission.” Huawei, however, did not provide information with which the Committee could evaluate these claims, as Huawei refused to answer the specific questions of the Committee inquiring about the company’s precise mechanisms of interaction with and regulation by these government bodies.”

A little later, the report concludes: “Huawei’s failure to provide further detailed information explaining how it is formally regulated, controlled, or otherwise managed by the Chinese government undermines the company’s repeated assertions that it is not inappropriately influenced by the Chinese government.”

If there is a pattern developing here, it’s a fairly straightforward one – the conclusions reached by the Committee are based, it seems, on Huawei failing to prove its innocence. And many of the disputes outlined in today’s report are ones that courts, or other inquiries based on due process, would likely resolve conclusively in one way or another.

And courts may actually get involved, at least for the small stuff. The Select Committee said it would refer a number of specific allegations on to various regulatory and law enforcement bodies for further action. But these are not the cloak-and-dagger espionage claims suggested in the top lines of the report – instead, some focus on foreign employees working for the company in the US while on visit visas, or discrimination against non-Chinese staff in the company’s American unit.

One such smoking gun: “first-hand accounts of former employees suggest that Huawei does not appropriately purchase software applications for use by its employees.”

And even more serious, a slideshow presentation passed around Capitol Hill by the company, presumably in attempt to win favour, may have inadvertently backfired: The presentation, the committee said, “itself violates copyright obligations by knowingly using proprietary material from an outside, nonaffiliated consulting firm.”

But these, ultimately, are not what the central allegations against one of the world’s largest technology companies are about. Instead, it has been heavily insinuated that this company could be acting as a secret arm of its national military, which itself has nefarious plans toward the United States. Those kind of allegations need serious, credible resolution – something today’s report has not come close to providing.